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Recent blog entries by tdxdave

Building a web-base content management system is hard. The work isn't necessarily hard, but he decisions are. Mainly, should or should I not include this kitchen sink. There are basically two main classes of CMS that I have seen. Super flexbile, powerful, incomprehensible systems, or simple easy to use systems with few features.

Working on OpenACS 4.5, I was introduced to a new application for OpenACS called edit-this-page. It's goal is a simple, easy to use, and easy to extend CMS. I am working on the next version, and the temptation to add more and more features that would "be nice to have" is very strong. Deciding what is necessary, and what is optional is very tricky. It is also probably impossible. It is better to build a good base that can be extended. OpenACS is a toolkit to build applications. It is a given that there will be code written to customize it. I think this is the way to go. Leave methods to extend and add features available, but do not build in too much.

Well forget NSSoap. It looks like development has stopped on
it, and I can't seem to get it to work. I am forging ahead
with TclSOAP http://tclsoap.sourceforge.net as the base. I
have mainly run into problems with loading standard Tcl
packages into AOLserver. We are working on getting the
package require command, and Tcl namespaces working, and
changing the way Tcl interpreters are created inside AOLserver.

I got the Daily
Chump IRC bot running on the #openacs
channel on irc.openprojects.net. It is a weblog created by
logging all the URLs typed into the channel. It's written
in Python so I really have no idea how it works. It creates
XML files and comes with XSLT stylesheets to transform it
into HTML.